


Dues

by Pyrosane



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Harry-centric, Old Age, One Shot, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrosane/pseuds/Pyrosane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Harry Styles is gray and fading. In which Harry Styles remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dues

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know where this came from. Maybe I spend too much time on planes, with nothing to do.

       The whirring is something he can’t quite place, and he finds that remembering is getting harder. Each tap, tap, tap freezes him, and he wants to ask, where’s the restroom?

       Here, there is no aging, only the dark captured when shutters are pulled. Kick. Two more. He turns, there is a child. He wants to reach for the foot, hold it still, tell the mother that her boy is being a nuisance.

       He is nothing short of relieved when the woman comes around, pushing a cart bearing gifts of alcohol. With trembling fingers he is too eager, almost spilling the plastic cup she offers him. Quick, quick, he lets the liquid burn his throat before settling on attacking a sick liver.

       He does this maybe three more times, just until they tell him that that’s enough for the time being, and he forces himself to sleep like all the other bitter old men.

       But he is not old, not yet. Not until he has done what he came for. No, until then, he is still young, aged no more than the boy who has finally stilled behind him.

       And he dreams, too.

       He dreams more than he has ever dreamed before, about things like pirates and spaceships and empire conquests before he is left with a reminder, a ding telling him to put on his seatbelt. He wakes, fights off the jealousy at the sight of the old, the ones who continue sleeping with mouths hanging open. The attendants come around on their behalf, and he tells himself that that’s pitiful. He is still young and invincible, he can do these things for himself.

       The whirring is something he can’t quite place, and he finds that remembering is getting harder. Soon, he finds himself hitting delete on numbers belonging to faces belonging to names he doesn’t recall.

       At the end of this purge, four names remain, and he doesn’t remember them, either, but it just doesn’t feel _right_ to erase them from his life. He’ll just keep them then, just for a little while longer, until he gets off of this damn plane maybe.

       After he sleeps and wakes for the second time, he has only a handful of memories left. Like the one from sixty years ago, a little tune along the lines of _tonight let’s get some, and live while we’re young_ , but maybe that’s just a song he heard on the radio earlier that day. A song sung by the young, but his lips itch at the thought of it, and he swears that in another lifetime, his tongue has traced over every syllable. Still, it’s the clearest thing in his mind that has settled in years, and he remembers the flashes of color as they spin, him and four others, smiles plastered on their faces except this time, they seem real. The last time he must have smiled like that, he doesn’t know.

       The next snippet of his own life he sees took place fifty six years ago, he is sure of it, from the way his chest tightens and he thinks he is in pain, beaten down by two words that should have killed him, _I’m leaving_. If he ever learned to love, that would have been it. If he ever learned to love, it would have been with that man, all light laughter and blue eyes before he took one too many hits and found escape. _I’m going back home_ , he had said. _It’s been a good run_. Left him alone with rare hellos and goodbyes for the next forty years.

       It is a rat race, keeping him real. He scrambles to hold everything in, these thoughts that rush out of him like a flood. No matter, his arms simply aren’t big enough. He drops one by one, the biggest piece of thought being something aged fifty nine years, when he bit his tongue and tasted blood because he was strong. Barely alive, he stood like a king in a crowd of thousands, all screaming his name and letting him glow like his mother always said he would. And how he regrets what he never cherished until his time was up.

       He has so many regrets.

       The last meals are served, and he thinks it is funny. Last meals, supper, like getting off of this winged monstrosity will be the end. Maybe, he thinks, it will. He scoffs at the food, wonders when he went from star to dust, a larger than life portrait of the world to an empty canvas.

       Without many teeth left, it is hard for him to eat his share of steak and peas. So he asks for popcorn in a plastic cup instead and believes, for just a second, that it tastes like home, the one from sixty five years ago. There weren’t five of them, then. Only a scattered handful of boys he liked to call his brothers, when second after second they spent together moving their feet meant one more secret shared, one more detail about their little lives that were let out like a gasp. In the kitchen they sat, huddled by candle light and seeing each other, _really_ seeing each other, for the first time as they drew together and he wondered when he became such a soft heart, throwing protective arms around the oldest boy who was called _Louis_ but was just as _broken_ as the rest of them were.

       When he is finished, it is summer. Seventy years ago, he ran around in the streets for a day, but decided he didn’t like soccer because his shoes were too precious. The dirt he liked but the shoes he couldn’t afford, not new ones anyway. He was too pretty for that kind of thing, his character too unique, and that’s when he decided he wanted to be rich. Rich and famous and on top of the world. So he settled on the idea of becoming an astronaut. But down the road, fate took a turn and he became something else, something more earthbound but even bigger nonetheless. Fifty three years ago, there wasn’t a person on the planet who hadn’t heard of the name Harry Styles.

       The plane lands, and he gets off. He refuses any help standing and carrying his bags out the door, and nobody complains about his slow pace because to do that would be rude. His hair is white and his eyes are sunken, anyone can see that.

       What he is here to do, he doesn’t know. It is luck that has him pulling out a yellowing piece of paper with a name and an address, and it is luck that has him hailing a cab and ringing on the doorbell of a small house in a suburb called Nowhere Valley. There, the wind picks up and leafs through green trees, swaying to the hum of giggling teenagers who swear they are in love. He knows that feeling all too well.

       The door opens with a slow creak and he finds himself staring at another man, someone who stoops but tries not to. This is someone who used to be strong, handsome, tall, and Harry is hit with a thought that catches his breath and he’s still reeling when he says _hey liam, how are you_?

       What he gets back is _harry_.

       And it makes his eyes sting because he hasn’t heard that word, that two syllable word in too long, over a decade it must have been. And he wants to cry, only a little, but he really did miss the graying figure standing in the door frame.

        _Come in. Everyone’s already here_.

       Everyone? But he goes in anyway, and for a fleeting moment, the living room is just a mess of the old and the ugly.

       The whirring is something he can’t quite place, and he finds that remembering is getting easier.

       Two minutes ago, he stood in the middle of a room, surrounded by the weak and feeble.

       Now, he sits among demigods, young boys who shake with ill-contained energy and know, if anything, that time is nothing and the world is theirs.

 


End file.
